


On the Mend

by navaan



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst and Fluff, Episode Related, Episode: s02e08 The Impossible Planet, Episode: s02e09 The Satan Pit, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, dwsanta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-29
Updated: 2010-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-14 05:01:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/145648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After "The Impossible Planet"/"The Satan Pit" Rose needs some time to get back on her feet. The Doctor knows just the place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Mend

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the dwsanta on lj exchange as a gift to juliet316

Rose is shaken by what has happened.

He knows this. He can tell by the way she falls silent at times. Even more by the way she wakes up from nightmares. Of course, the way she is not talking about any of this is telling, too.

“Do you honestly never sleep?” she asks slightly grumpy at his probably unexpected presence in the Tardis library. Rose is still dressed in her pyjamas and looks ruffled. It seems she left her room in a hurry, probably fleeing from another bad dream and looking for a place to be alone with her thoughts.

“I wouldn’t say never,” he chuckles, peering over the edge of his book as if nothing was wrong. “I just don’t need sleep that often. We can’t all sleep our lives away like you sleepy little human beings.” He smiles at her, but she doesn’t seem to notice. Her thoughts are somewhere else again, it seems.

“If you’re awake then... Want to do something?” The Doctor puts down the book on a small table in front of him.

Rose looks down at the book with strangely vacant eyes. “What are you reading, anyway? I can’t make out the writing...” she stops, unsure. “Isn’t the Tardis supposed to translate everything?”

“Ancient Gallifreyan. I’m reading up on some theories.” He is reading up on something humans might call demons and the early times of the universe. Gallifrey had had a culture that went back all the way to the Dark Times after all - and although the Doctor likes to be challenged, he doesn’t like unsolved riddles. And the Tardis data banks only go so far. He’d already looked at everything remotely relevant there.

She nods absentmindedly as if his answer is explanation enough, and he thinks it’s time to shake her out of this state of brooding. “You didn’t answer my question? Want to go somewhere?”

The only answer he gets at first is a shrug, but he can tell from her posture that she is thinking about it. Then she whispers: “I’d like to see something amazing. Something I haven’t seen ever before. Something peaceful would be nice for a change...”

An idea is forming. Coming to a conclusion, he jumps to his feet, determined not to let this brooding go on any longer. “Why don’t you go and get dressed? I think I know just the place...” She follows his clue and gets up to make her way back to her room. “Better dress warmly!” he calls after her as an afterthought.

The book is still lying on the table and he looks at it with a certain disdain. They should both move on. Enough research on impossible entities. Time to move on.

\---

It’s a relieve to see her excited. She doesn’t hesitate to leave the Tardis - not even for the fragment of a second - and just runs out to look around. “This is amazing!” he hears her exclaim, before he follows her outside. She’s already making her way down the slope of glassy rocks. “It’s so beautiful. What is it?” They are surrounded by walls that look like ice, but shine with fluorescent colours.

“Living crystal,” he says, closing the door of the police box behind himself. Surely she had known right away that this wasn’t simply a planet full of ice. He had promised her something amazing after all. Something peaceful, too.

The Doctor smiles at her careful attempt to touch one of the walls. The light changes where she touches the crystalline material and she draws her hand back in surprise. “Nearly the whole planet is covered with this. It’s one living organism,” he explains.

Rose looks around with that astonished, curious expression he has come to love. The light catches in her hair and makes it shine with all the colours of a rainbow. He steps towards her and she giggles at the patterns the colours create on his coat. “You should have a crazy coloured tie like that,” she points out with a broad smile.

“Yeah,” he says, twisting his mouth, clearly unimpressed. “You can always get me one for Christmas.”

That gets him the first honest laugh at one of his jokes since the nightmares started. “If I say I will, you’ll just see to it that we hop from time to time and never land on a Christmas day ever again.” Her laughter is like music. The brightly coloured walls seem to agree and are producing a swirl of bright colours. “Does it understand us?” Her eyes are twinkling with excitement and wonder. Whatever Rose has lost on the base on Krop Tor it isn’t her ability to be open for new things.

The Doctor feels glad about that. “Not really,” he goes on explaining, touching his palm against the cool surface that again explodes with colours. “It knows we are here, though. And it seems we’re not a threat. That’s something.”

She chuckles. “Yeah. That’s something all right.” They watch the colours play around them for a while. It’s like standing inside a giant kaleidoscope. Rose hooks her arm through his and leans against him. “Thank you for bringing me here. I’ve seen a lot of beautiful and scary stuff since I’m with you. But this seems very special.” She doesn’t say anything more, but he has a feeling that she knows why he brought her here in the first place.

“There is a lake down there.” He points in the general direction. “It’s an amazing sight. And it’s peaceful.”

“Ah. Sounds nice. Let’s take a look.”

Gently he pulls her along. This is a day for peaceful relaxation and they are going to make the best of it.

\--  
The lake’s surface looks like a mirror. crystal walls rise up all around it. The play of colours is breathtaking. It’s soothing just to watch the slow changes of patterns. “It’s a bit like staring into a blazing fire. Fascinating. Hypnotising,” Rose remarks wide-eyed.

But, the Doctor notices, it’s cold here, colder than it was further up the slope. He isn’t particularly bothered by it, but he doesn’t want his companion to be uncomfortable. When he looks over to check on her, she doesn’t look uncomfortable, though. Rose exhales to watch her breath, like a child, then turns to look at him. Her smile is dazzling. She walks to the edge to stare at her own reflection on the watery surface. “Looks like glass, too.”

“Don’t fall in. It’s real water. No crystal.”

She laughs. “Yes, mum.”

He watches her walk along the shore line, her hands stuffed into her pockets, and follows her slowly. Content to watch her walk, reasonably sure that nothing can happen to them here, he is content just to follow and watch. Rose peers over her shoulder once in a while to make sure he’s still there. It seems they are both all right with this strange and rare tranquility for the moment.

Rose walks on for quite some time. Then she finds a group of blueish non crystalline rocks and crawls on top to sit. He climbs up beside her. It’s a nice spot, overlooking the lake. Although she seems to be absorbed in the view, she smiles at him briefly. Then without a word she leans her head against his shoulder.

It’s strange and expected and all so significantly different from before. He knows something important has shifted since they nearly lost each other. It’s just so hard to admit it. Even harder to really act on it.

“Are you feeling better?” he asks awkwardly, after clearing his throat more than once.

“I don’t know,” she answers with a shrug. “That thing said I was going to die.”

Since then the Doctor had forbidden himself to even think about it. Because Rose isn’t going to die. She is save. She is here with him. They nearly lost each other there - but they are both save and together and not stuck somewhere without the Tardis. Everything is like it as before. Or is it? He never likes to dwell on threats from the past and he doesn’t care for prophecies made by _evil ideas_. “It lied, Rose. Whatever it was, it lied. Don’t worry so much.”

“I know I shouldn’t worry. It’s just... For a while there I thought you were gone. That I would be stuck in some strange future of humanity all alone. I dream of it. Of being alone. Of being without you. It feels a bit like dying.”

He feels a heaviness in his chest that he rarely allows himself to analyse. “You are one brave girl, Rose Tyler. And I believe in you. Always remember that.” It’s true, but it’s not everything that has come up to the surface since he faced an impossible demon inside an endless Pit, since they thought they’d be stuck together without the possibility of time travel. He just can’t put these things into words and make them real. Because he knows how this is going to end sooner or later - because he is a Time Lord and she is a human girl. There is no forever for them even if they both want it. And he does want it. Although he still can’t say it.

One thing is certain. He won’t leave her behind again like that. Because that’s what he has done- after promising her to stay with her in that new life she would have had to face. He hadn’t wanted to risk his life and he hadn’t planned on being stuck in a pit - he never planned on finding trouble at all -, but in the end that’s exactly what happened. And Rose had been very nearly stuck in a strange and unknown life and all on her own.

“I know you do. And I believe in you,” she say with a small sigh. An easy admission to her, but something so much more scary for him. “I don’t want to leave you like _that_ , you know? Dying, I mean. You’d just blame yourself.” She slaps him on the knee playfully and chuckles as if it’s only a joke. But he can clearly sense that it goes far deeper than that. How can she be worried about him in a situation like this? How can she sense these things? How can she know him, when he always keeps everything so close? “You know what?” she asks. “I think I am feeling better. Enough brooding for a while.”

She doesn’t know what this means to him: To see her smile again, untroubled and free.

On an irresistible impulse he wraps his arms around her and presses her against his chest. If he holds on to her tightly enough, they’ll never have to part ways. He’ll never have to let her go. He’ll never lose her. Shoving away these gloomy thoughts, he presses a soft kiss on her brow. When he finally leans back and catches her eyes, they are wide with surprise.

He wants to crack a joke so they can return to normal. There is no way this is going to work. Better to go back to the way it was, before she gets hurt. He’s still to damaged to do this...

Then she leans up and catches his lips with her own in a chaste and very patient kiss. He is too surprised to pull away. It’s over in the blink of an eye. “Enough brooding?” she asks and smiles at his ruffled state. She playfully bumps her shoulder against his and slides down the rock to stand on the crystalline shore again. “Let’s head back then. Yes?”

She understands me better than I do sometimes, he thinks. With one hand he rubs his face in a slightly nervous manner. “Yeah, sure. If you’re feeling better.”

“Come on. The universe isn’t waiting for us.”

“Ha,” he hops down beside her. “You’d be surprised.”

Together they’d beat the devil - or something that was close enough. Now they also mastered the fear. The universe is waiting for them all right.


End file.
